Why have vampires become such a feature of modern culture? ... From sanguinarians who drink blood, to psychic vampires who suck the energy from those around them, The Psychology of Vampires explores the absorbing connections between vampirism and psychology, theology, medicine and culture.

you have arrived here in search of Edward Mordrake (Edward Mordrake) photos, I’m sorry but no actual photos exist. The image that likely brought you here is a wax interpretation of Edward that was created long, long after his demise. Furthermore, the placement of his parasitic twin is near impossible and stands only as an artistic rendering. Of course, there is a very real kernel of truth to his story and there have been documented cases of two-headed boys, two-faced human curiosities, one-of-a-kind people and other unique individuals with unusual faces that you may find very interesting .Edward Mordrake – A Bizarre and Interesting , night forest alight with bright moon in clouds illustrating edward mordrake .Known as one of the most bizarre and most interesting cases is the tale of Edward Mordrake. The true tale of Edward Mordrake (Mordrake) has been lost to history. His unusual case occurred early The story always begins the same way. Edward Mordrake is said be have been heir to one of the noblest families in England.He was considered a bright and charming man – a scholar, a musician and a young man in possession of profound grace. He was said to be quite handsome when viewed from the front – yet, on the back of his head there was a second face, twisted and evil.

In some versions of the story, the second face of Edward is a beautiful girl.This is an impossibility as all parasitic twins are of the same sex. Often it was said that it possessed its own intelligence and was quite malignant in its intentions. It has been said that the eyes would follow spectators and its lips would ‘gibber’ relentlessly and silently. According to legend it would smile and sneer as Edward wept over his condition. While no voice was ever audible, Edward swore that often he would be kept awake by the hateful whispers of his ‘evil twin’. It is said that Edward begged many doctors to remove this “demon head” from his skull.

It has also been said that Edward lived completely isolated from everyone else. He thought the best way to carry on his life was to stay away from everyone. This isolation even included his own family members.

The story has always concluded with his death at age 23. Edward left behind a letter requesting that the ‘demon face’ be destroyed before his burial, ‘lest it continues its dreadful whisperings in my grave.’ How can one make the assumption that there is fact beneath this tale?

It does not require a great leap of faith to conclude that the tale of Mordake is based on some nugget of fact, .These are indeed very rare cases and the human mind has a tendency to classify the unusual as impossible – it often helps us sleep well at night.Can this actually happen? Is this real?

Slayer muses that it is for the best as it isn't good to be attracted to the creature she is meant to destroy.

Catherine's sister asks her what happened, Catherine answers that Edward strives to look and behave the very best, but at the same time resents drawing attention to himself: "an unpleasant mix of presumption and resentment", , and repels the broad minded he is trying to expand, reversing uneasily it's opposing intention.

"Then what of it, she demands rightfully?"

That even hypothetically worthy, who abandons the middle ground for one more worthy, presuming such not avail a necessity for such, even extemporously.

The Vampire yawned , and forged around for the familiarity of the gentleness of pain to ascend from his lower regions.

"Oh, You do not understand, my dear, but it's so cold that Your words manifest in my soul"

Totally agreeable to mix affects, which inclines to presume a connection way down, in the soul of the vampire.But such a dangerous exposure for the energy down there may animate from other then the frequency of light!The fear of light is not one of affect, of an instinctive fear, but it consists in the darkness of the obvious effect that light has on such presumptive affects.(affectation, on an individual preceptive mode).

The Vampire is like a bat he cannot understand the act of seeing without having the sense of sight. He suffers in his own medium, for he haangone back into the cave, and that can be also interpreted as a heroic return to an underworld where losing his sight, he has to use estar effort the enlighten this modern world.

His other senses compensate for this lack. So it can go both ways now. People up above can not see this.

Week in geekWhy is Donald Trump obsessed with Bane in The Dark Knight Rises?Is this supervillain the kind of role model we expect the US president to adopt?

Ben Child

Thu 11 Apr 2019 06.25 EDT Last modified on Thu 11 Apr 2019 06.26 EDTThere are many superheroes an ailing American president might choose to associate with in an effort to pick up some much needed kudos. Frank Miller’s seminal graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns features a version of Superman who is in thrall to Ronald Reagan. In the film Iron Man 3, the fictional President Matthew Ellis is protected by Don Cheadle’s stars and stripes-sporting Iron Patriot. There’s even a version of the Avengers in Marvel comics that was put together by George W Bush.

With so many virtuous options available to him, it seems bizarre that Donald Trump has chosen the Batman supervillain Bane to cosy up to. Observers first noticed Trump’s fascination with Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, in which Tom Hardy’s hulking, masked brute seizes Gotham, when the president stole one of the villain’s lines for his 2017 inaugural speech. This week, Warner Bros threatened legal action after Trump borrowed the film’s score for a 2020 campaign video featuring a number of famous figures he has figuratively crossed swords with, such as Bryan Cranston, Amy Schumer, Rosie O’Donnell and the Clintons.

We can ask ourselves why Trump is such a big fan of the movie, which he reviewed positively on his YouTube channel on its release in 2012. But the more interesting question is why on Earth the president thinks this is the film score to soundtrack his fight for re-election.

Seven years ago, when Nolan’s final Batman film hit cinemas, critics compared Bane’s activities with those of the then current Occupy movement – there was even a (sadly ill-founded) rumour that Nolan was going to use the New York protests as a backdrop for his shoot. Hardy’s villain, like Occupy, seems determined to overturn the established order and replace it with something new.

And yet, while much of the audience may have had some sympathy for Occupy’s causes, Bane is quickly exposed as a baddy. As well as breaking the caped crusader’s back and throwing him in a large hole, from which Bruce Wayne spends a large, and fairly tedious, portion of the film trying to escape, Bane threatens to blow up Gotham, murdering millions of innocents in the process, if anyone tries to mess with his newly built bad guy republic. If anything, the supervillain and his cronies can be compared more accurately to Isis, for their brazen ambition and willingness to use human shields to hold on to power at any cost.

He is the false prophet who spouts populist rhetoric in an effort to convince the people he is on their side

The other problem with cosying up to Bane is that the he epitomises everything Trump’s critics accuse him of being. He is the false prophet who spouts populist rhetoric in an effort to convince the people he is on their side, but in reality only holds their worst interests in his cold, black heart. The line many recognised from the president’s 2017 inaugural speech is this one:

“Today’s ceremony, however, has a very special meaning because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you, the people.”

The earlier Bane speech, delivered on the steps of Gotham’s Blackgate Prison was: “We take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity. And we give it to you, the people.”

Not long after giving this speech, Bane is hatching a plan to destroy Gotham and all its people in a League of Shadows-inspired massacre. But there’s worse for Trump, for the masked menace is eventually revealed as nothing more than a lovelorn lackey of the real baddie, Marion Cotillard’s Talia al Ghul (the daughter of Batman’s defeated rival in 2005’s Batman Begins).

So not only is Bane an out-and-out villain, he is only a relatively minor one designed to obscure the identity of the real (female) power behind the throne, which doesn’t sound like the sort of role model the president would admire at all.

Dracula (Vlad Dracula III) was the King of Vampires, who was based on Bram Stoker's iconic character and a small bit of Bela Lugosi's portrayal in the 1930's. He's the main villain of the movie "The Batman vs. Dracula".

HistoryAside from his beloved bride, Carmilla Karnstein, much of Dracula's origins in the film matched the origins that were described in Stoker's original novel. Originating from Transylvania, Dracula was eventually vanquished by a gentleman (probably Professor Van Helsing himself), and his remains were moved at an undetermined time to Gotham City.

Dracula revived.Buried in Gotham Cemetery, Dracula was accidentally revived by The Penguin, whom he then hypnotized into acting as his Igor-like servant. Dracula soon became obsessed with remaking Gotham in his own image, and turned hordes of citizens into vampires like himself, with him as their King and Carmilla as their Queen. Dracula seemed unable to tolerate Bruce Wayne being the ruler of Gotham's elite, and became intrigued by Batman, and believed that his legacy had an influence on the latter's existence.

Dracula (The Batman).jpgDracula successfully hypnotized Bruce Wayne for a short period while he acted as Dr. Alucard, but that cover was soon blown. Dracula seemed to have a growing attraction to Vicky Vale, who appeared to vaguely resemble Carmilla when she was still alive. In an attempt to resurrect his true bride, Dracula hypnotized and kidnapped Vicky, and drew the life energy out of her soul and into Carmilla. However, Batman managed to interrupt the ritual, saved Vicky, and cured the 'Lost Ones' of their Vampirism, as Dracula turned his attention to finally killing him. Eventually blowing his way into the Batcave after a prolonged chase through the city's underground tunnels, a badly wounded Batman managed to blast Dracula with a device from Wayne Industries that stored pure sunlight, which destroyed hiSuperhuman Strength

"The Batman vs. Dracula"Dr. Alucard, the namesake that Dracula used when incognito among humans, as well as being Dracula's real name reversed (which was how Bruce pieced together that Dr. Alucard was Dracula in disguise), was also a name that was used in various fiction and media several times as the name of a powerful vampire (which was often a vampire who was related in some way to Dracula).Dracula could not be rendered human by the vampire cure that Batman had located for restoring the Vampiric Lost Ones' humanity, although exposure to the cure did still cause Dracula to suffer a brief flash of pain. Dracula explained that his Vampirism was incurable because his was a truly supernatural condition that could not be undone by any Earthly means, whereas the Lost Ones that Dracula had turned were essentially just Vampirism-diseased humans.Interestingly, Dracula himself stated in the film that being exposed to sunlight was "an almost permanent death" for his kind (as he described Carmilla's demise), and so, while he appeared to have been killed at the end of the film, there was still a chance that one day he might be resurrected again. However, it appeared that the resurrection required a second vampire to extract the soul. However, in Bram Stoker's original story, sunlight did not kill a vampire. Rather, like all nocturnal animals, vampires were perfectly capable of functioning during the day, albeit in a diminished capacity.In addition to his usual liking of blood as sustenance, Dracula also enjoyed eating flesh. That was shown at the Wayne Manor Party when Dracula ate the beef steak tartare that was offered as hors d'oeuvres, much to Vicky's disgust. It was implied again that Vampires also eat flesh when Dracula stated that after Carmilla had fed on Vicky's soul, he would give her Batman's corpse as a wedding gift.

I write about physics, science, academia, and pop culture.Tami Varma, right, and her brother Robin, the grandchildren of Devendra Varma, a scholar of English gothic tales and an expert in vampire lore, pose in coffins, at the Bran Castle, in Bran, Romania, Monday, Oct. 31, 2016. A Canadian brother and sister are passing Halloween night curled up in red velvet coffins in the Transylvanian castle that inspired the Dracula legend, the first time in 70 years anyone has spent the night in the gothic fortress, after they bested 88,000 people who entered a competition hosted by Airbnb to get the chance to dine and sleep at the castle in Romania. A portrait of medieval prince Vlad the Impaler is placed on the wall. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)Tami Varma, right, and her brother Robin, the grandchildren of Devendra Varma, a scholar of English gothic tales and an expert in vampire lore, pose in coffins, at the Bran Castle, in Bran, Romania, Monday, Oct. 31, 2016. A Canadian brother and sister are passing Halloween night curled up in red velvet coffins in the Transylvanian castle that inspired the Dracula legend, the first time in 70 years anyone has spent the night in the gothic fortress, after they bested 88,000 people who entered a competition hosted by Airbnb to get the chance to dine and sleep at the castle in Romania. A portrait of medieval prince Vlad the Impaler is placed on the wall. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)Like a lot of things these days, it started with a tweet, by Zach Weinersmith:

The fact that vampire skin can tell candle light from sunlight HAS to violate quantum mechanics. I just need to figure out how…

— Zach Weinersmith (@ZachWeiner) March 27, 2018

I immediately made a physics joke in return:

It’s just a temperature threshold. You need to catch several vampires, and expose them to black-body radiation at a range of temperatures between “incandescent bulb” and “surface of the Sun.” https://t.co/nUdRwr2FdE

And since then, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about the quantum physics of vampires… Having put that time in, though, I might as well get a blog post out of it.

The central physics idea that I’m about to grossly overthink is that vampires are somehow distinguishing sunlight from other forms of light. They’re perfectly capable of appearing in brightly lit rooms to attack ordinary humans, but sunlight reduces them to ash in seconds. But in physics terms, one photon is just like another. So what could possibly distinguish sunlight from other forms of light?

In physics, we can describe any individual photon of light in terms of two related numbers, the frequency and the wavelength (they’re related through the speed of light– frequency times wavelength is equal to the speed– which is a universal constant; for this reason, physicists will frequently switch between the two, opting for whichever is most convenient at a given moment). To characterize a source of light, though, we need to know the full spectrum of frequencies it puts out– what’s the intensity of light emitted (how many photons per second) at a particular wavelength.

Most sources that generate a significant amount of light are either thermal sources or atomic line sources. A thermal source is just an object that’s emitting light because it’s very hot– the heating element in a toaster, say, or the filament of an incandescent bulb. An atomic line source, on the other hand, consists of a collection of atoms of a particular element that are then induced to emit light at one of the characteristic frequencies associated with those atoms– a neon light, or those yellowish sodium-vapor streetlights, say. For these purposes, lasers are a special case of an atomic line source– they emit only a single narrow range of frequencies (though in the case of semiconductor lasers, these aren’t actually coming from atomic states).

Max Planck in 1901 (photo from Wikimedia) next to an incandescent bulb and its spectrum. The light from a thermal source has a very broad spectrum, emitting a wide range of different frequencies, which might seem like a total mess, but it turns out there’s a simple way to characterize these. Hot objects emit light in what’s called a “black-body spectrum,” a particular distribution of intensities vs. wavelength that depends only on the temperature. the physics of black-body radiation was first explained by Max Planck in 1900, and Planck’s theory is what gives us the term “quantum” for a unit of energy.

So, if you’re looking for a distinction between sunlight and candlelight (as Zack originally noted) or sunlight and an incandescent bulb (for more modern vampires), the key distinction between them is the temperature. A candle flame is pretty hot in human terms, but only around 2000K (reminder: Kelvin temperatures are measured starting at absolute zero, and one kelvin is one degree Celsius; room temperature is a little bit less than 300K), while a really hot light bulb filament might hit 3000K. The Sun’s spectrum closely matches a black-body at something like 5600K.

What’s the difference between these? Well, the peak of the black-body spectrum shifts toward shorter wavelengths as the temperature increases, which is why objects being heated glow first a dull red, then yellow, then white. So sunlight would have a lot more short-wavelength radiation than candlelight or incandescent bulb lights– really a lot more, because the drop-off at the short wavelength end of the spectrum is extremely rapid. The spectrum of the sun extends well into the ultraviolet, while candles and light bulbs produce next to no UV light.

So, it might be just the ultraviolet light that’s the problem– one series of vampire novels by Charlie Huston has vampires exposed to sunlight dying from extremely rapid cancers caused by UV lights, which is a nod toward this feature. But, of course, if UV alone were the culprit, that would present another problem– as we know from modern vampire movies, they frequently hunt on the dance floors of night clubs, and it’s a rare nightclub that doesn’t feature some “black lights” bathing the crowd in ultraviolet radiation…

So, how could you distinguish sunlight from a black light source? Well, the sun emits light over a huge range of wavelengths, where “black lights” tend toward the atomic line source end of things, so maybe you need both short-wavelength radiation and long-wavelength radiation at the same time. Maybe, vampires in sunlight are victims of a two-photon process.

ShutterstockIf your only exposure to the idea of photons is a survey course, this might seem like an impossibility. We usually introduce the idea of photons through an experiment like the photoelectric effect, where short-wavelength light has photons with enough energy to knock electrons loose from a metal surface. When we do that in intro courses, we specifically deny the possibility of absorbing multiple low-energy photons to build up the necessary energy.

The forbidding of multiple-photon processes is a lie-to-children, though: you can, in fact, have processes where you absorb two photons at once, but they’re much less likely than single-photon absorption, and thus not really relevant for the photoelectric effect. This is what makes a green laser pointer possible, though: a green laser pointer uses an infrared laser source that enters a special “doubling crystal” that can absorb two infrared photons and spit out one green photon with half the wavelength (twice the frequency). This is exceedingly unlikely to happen, and thus requires a fairly high intensity, which is why you should be careful when playing with green laser pointers: they’re supposed to have a filter in them to block the vast majority of the infrared light that doesn’t get absorbed, but if that filter was left out to hold down the price, they can actually be much more intense than advertised, and dangerous to your eyes.

For vampires to be sensitive to sunlight specifically, you might imagine some process involving two photons of different invisible-to-humans wavelengths, one in the ultraviolet and one in the infrared. The sun produces huge amounts of infrared radiation, but many human light sources do not, opting instead to optimize the amount of visible light emitted. The likelihood of this process would depend very strongly on the intensity of the light– it would go like the product of the intensity at each of the relevant wavelengths, so cutting the intensity in half would reduce the rate of two-photon absorption by a factor of four. This would explain why vampires are sensitive to sunlight, but can strike dramatic poses in the light of the full moon, which is, after all, just reflecting light from the Sun– the many-times smaller amount of light from the moon has all the right wavelengths, but not enough intensity to be a problem.

So, there’s my crazy retcon for why sunlight specifically, but not candles, incandescent bulbs, fluorescent bulbs, and black lights in nightclubs: something about the process that reanimates them is disrupted by a two-photon process involving both long and short wavelengths found in sunlight.. It’s a theory that makes fairly specific predictions, so as I said on Twitter, now we just need to collect a bunch of vampires and put it to the test…

I had the good fortunate to spend this Halloween in the field collecting samples from black-footed cats in the Karoo region of South Africa. As part of a study that Jonathan Eisen and I are conducting on the coevolution between bacteria and cats, we are collecting samples from as many different cat species as possible. The black-footed cat is the smallest cat in Africa and is endemic to Southern Africa. They are solitary and rarely seen and, fortunately for them, they do not prey upon chickens like some wild cats, so they are not a target of predator control by farmers.

Studying black-footed cats requires spending much of the night looking for them using spotlights. In addition we spent the middle part of the day tracking down cats with radio collars so we could change the batteries (and collect a few samples). After a week of sleep deprivation under a waning full moon, including the night of Halloween, my mind turned to thoughts of vampires and cats. These small cats are quite fierce and have lovely fangs and bright green eyes that shine yellow in the spotlights. Like vampires, they are predators who drink blood and go underground during the day. And they seem similarly upset when you dig them out of the burrow and bring them out into the daylight. The only way to do this is to sedate them first.

According to Wikipedia, cats are included among the animals linked to historical tales of vampires. From Mesopotamia comes the mythical Lilitu or Lilith, a demon who preyed on men and subsists on the blood of babies. In tales from the European Jews of medieval Rhineland, Lilith was the first wife of Adam who was banished. She became a demon who transformed herself into a cat and charmed her victims into believing that she was benevolent and irresistible. In other sources, Lilith is also depicted as a terrifying blood-sucking creature with a lion’s head and the body of a donkey.

A black-footed cat sedated and fitted with a radio collar (photo by Holly Ganz).A black-footed cat sedated and fitted with a radio collar (photo by Holly Ganz).

When they are sedated, you can see that the black-footed cats have lovely black spots and stripes and yellow-green eyes. You might be tempted to think that such a lovely small cat would make a nice pet. But in actuality they are fierce little cats who must contend with a lot to survive. Despite their mesmerizing beauty, the black-footed cats are not demons. But for fun, next year I suggest that one of the black-footed cats who is collared is also given the name Lilith.

Test:

Vampire not only have red or golden eyes color, it is said that they also have blue,green, etc. The color of their eyes show their best vampire power, for example, if a vampire have green eyes, they are very good in speed and so -------------.?.

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A peer-reviewed electronic journal published by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies

Sorgner (2009, 29) has argued that Bostrom (2005, 4) was wrong to maintain that there are only surface-level similarities between Nietzsche’s vision of the overman, or overhuman, and the transhumanist conception of the posthuman. Rather, he claims, the similarities are “significant” and can be found “on a fundamental level”. However, I think that Bostrom was in fact quite right to dismiss Nietzsche as a major inspiration for transhumanism. There may be some common ground, but there are also essential differences, some of which I am going to point out in this brief reply.

Beyond good and evil

First of all, transhumanists believe that it is both possible and desirable to improve human nature by means of technology (More 2009). They tend to assume that by “making better people” we will, as John Harris (2007, 3) puts it, make “the world a better place”. Posthumans will allegedly lead happier, more fulfilling lives than we do now. This assumption is the main reason why transhumanists demand that we pave the way for posthumanity. In other words, there is a moral imperative at the heart of the transhumanist agenda. David Pearce calls it the “hedonistic imperative” (lifelong well-being as a basic human right), Julian Savulescu (2001) the “principle of procreative beneficence”, which, if adhered to, naturally leads to the embrace of radical human enhancement and, by implication, posthumanity.

Nietzsche, on the other hand, had nothing but contempt for those who sought to improve the human condition, such as John Stuart Mill whom he denounced as a “blockhead” (Flachkopf) because Mill still believed in good and evil (both natural and moral) and felt that one should make it one’s duty to bring about the victory of the former and the destruction of the latter (E, WIII, 665). According to Nietzsche, the philosopher needs to position himself “beyond good and evil,” because there are no moral facts and nothing that is truly better or worse than anything else. Happiness for instance is not to be considered better than suffering. To believe otherwise indicates a grave error of judgement. And more than that: trying to improve humanity is actually an attempt to “suck the blood out of life,” an act of “vampirism” (EH, WII, 1158). Consequently, Nietzsche fervently denied that he himself intended any such thing: “The last I would promise is to better humanity.” (EH, WII, 1065).

Revaluation of all values

Transhumanists may want to revaluate certain aspects of our existence, but they certainly do not, as Nietzsche did, advocate the revaluation of all present values. On the contrary, they emphasise the continuity between (past and present) humanist, (present) transhumanist, and (future) posthuman values and see themselves as defenders of the Enlightenment’s legacy against its modern (bioconservative) enemies. “The posthuman values,” writes Bostrom (2005b, 5), “can be our current values”. Of course, a few things that are supposed to be valuable by some, such as “the natural,” are discarded, but on the whole a transhumanist would regard as good and valuable what is commonly regarded as good and valuable, e.g., a long, healthy and happy life, intellectual curiosity and proficiency, the ability to form deep and lasting relationship, etc.

Nietzsche, on the other hand, wanted to turn our whole system of values upside down, or rather rip it apart. He prided himself to be the “first immoralist” and hence “destroyer par excellence” (EH, WII, 1153). What was commonly regarded as evil needed to be recognized as the highest good. “Evil is man’s best power […] necessary for the best of the overhuman” (TSZ, WII, 524). He wondered whether not all great humans were in fact evil (E, WIII, 449), and he specifically and repeatedly mentions Cesar Borgia as “a kind of overhuman” (TI, W2, 1012), whom he admiringly describes as a “human predator” (Raubmensch) (BGE, WII, 653). Compassion, charity, loving one’s neighbour – traditional Christian values, but not alien to transhumanists either – are scoffed at as symptoms of decadence. According to Nietzsche, universal altruism would take the greatness from existence and effectively castrate humanity (EH, WII, 1155). Consequently, what puts Nietzsche’s (or more precisely Zarathustra’s) overhuman over the merely human is precisely his indifference to common moral concerns: “the good and just would call his overhuman devil” (EH, WII, 1156). Surely, transhumanists would not want to hold that the posthuman is post in this respect.

The non-existence of the mind

Transhumanists continue the logocentric tradition of Western philosophy. By and large they believe that what makes us human, and what is most valuable about our humanity, is the particularity of our minds. We are thinking beings, conscious of ourselves and the world, rational agents that use our environment including our own bodies to pursue our own freely chosen ends. And because our essence consists in our thinking, it is at least conceivable that we may one day be able to transfer (“upload”) our very being to a computer (or another biological brain) and thus achieve some kind of personal immortality. Generally, the organic body is held to be replaceable.

Nietzsche, however, opposed what he thought of as the Christian devaluation of the body and the bodily instincts. The mind, as an entity distinct from the body, was a clever invention, in other words a lie (EH, WII, 1157). It doesn’t exist. Because the invented mind used to be taken as a proof of humanity’s divine origin, one could only hope to reach human perfection by retracting, tortoise-like, one’s senses into oneself, relinquishing all commerce with earthly things, discarding one’s mortal shell, and thus retaining only what was essential to our humanity: pure spirit. For Nietzsche, however, “pure spirit” was “pure folly,” and consciousness in general a “symptom of imperfection” (A, WII, 1174). Nietzsche’s will to power, which is the essence of all life, and in fact the essence of all being, is preconscious and non-rational, although it has its own, superior, reason. One characteristic of the overhuman is that he knows himself to be “entirely body and nothing else” (TSZ, WII, 300).

The big lie of personal immortality

Transhumanism “stresses the moral urgency of saving lives”, which makes anti-aging medicine “a key transhumanist priority” (Bostrom 2005b, 9). The indefinite extension of our life spans is believed to be an obvious good. Nobody wants to die, death is an evil, and life generally (though not necessarily under any circumstances) a good. Hence, if we could achieve personal immortality, we should not hesitate, but seize it. For Nietzsche, however, the promise of personal immortality is nothing but a “big lie” (A, WII, 1205). Not so much because he thought it was impossible for us to ever become immortal, but rather because he believed that most of us are far too insignificant and worthless to deserve immortality.

Promising immortality (or indefinite life extension) to everybody only boosts the widespread delusion that the world revolves around every single one of us, whereas in fact most of us should never have been born in the first place. Most people actually die too late, not too early, because they have never learnt to live (TSZ, WII, 333). “‘Immortality’, granted to every Peter and Paul, has been the biggest, most vicious attack against noble humanity to date” (A, WII, 1205). The promise of personal immortality pretends that we are all equal. It denies difference and rank. Moreover, it is based on an erroneous reification (Versubstanzialisierung) and atomisation of the individual self. The ego is wrongly differentiated from the non-ego, which are in fact inseparable in the eternal process of becoming (E, WIII, 612). By wishing for personal immortality I cut myself off from this process, believe myself to me more important than the rest of the world, which, for all I care, may perish if only I will be safe (HATH, WI, 753). That is not an affirmation of power, but on the contrary an indication of impotence. That is why, just like the human, the self or the “I is something that needs to be overcome” (TSZ, WII, 303). Instead of doing everything to escape death we ought to practice the art of going at the right time and celebrate our dying as something that we freely embrace (TSZ, WII, 334), in order to plunge again into the great “ocean of becoming” (D, WI, 1193), in which we belong. The overhuman understands how to live and how to die. The transhumanist, in Nietzsche’s view, understands neither.

What is the Overhuman?

If the overhuman is not an improved version of the human, what is he? There are of course statements in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, especially in the first sections, that sound as if Nietzsche was indeed advocating the transformation of the human into some kind of posthuman. “Man is something that needs to be overcome” (TSZ, WII, 279). The overhuman is “the meaning of the earth” (TSZ, WII, 280), and man merely a “rope tied between animal and overhuman” (TSZ, WII, 281). But Nietzsche has no clear concept of the overhuman and produces at best vague intimations of what he has in mind (Shapiro 1980, 171). There is a chance that his overhuman is merely an ironic device, never meant to be taken seriously as an ideal human (Ansell-Pearson 1992, 310). After all, we shouldn’t forget that the overhuman was preached by Zarathustra, not Nietzsche himself, and may well be understood as a provisional concept in the ongoing movement of understanding (Lampert 1987, 258), as one possible perspective on the way things are, but not necessarily a true one, let alone the true one (Ansell-Pearson 1992, 314).

Nietzsche himself warned of misunderstanding the overhuman as some kind of higher human. Zarathustra, he reminds us, is the destroyer of all morality, not half saint, half genius, not an idealist type of higher human, not a Parsifal, but a Borgia (EH, WII, 1101). He is mainly characterised by contempt: of personal happiness and of reason (TSZ, WII, 280). The overhuman is not thought of as an exemplar of a future human or posthuman race, but as the “exceptional human” (Ausnahme-Mensch) (EC, WII, 1155), and there have always been such exceptional humans who were “in relation to the whole of humanity a kind of overhuman” (A, WII, 1166). Even though Nietzsche sometimes talks as if a whole race of overhumans were possible, the overhuman can in fact only exist in the singular, that is, set apart from others. Overhuman is who is strong enough to take reality as it is, in all its fearfulness (EC, WII, 1156), with all its pain and suffering, who does not want anything different, to the point that he would welcome the opportunity to live it all again, just as it was. The eternal recurrence of the same, the idea of which is the true centre of the Zarathustra, is counter to the dynamic optimism that characterises transhumanist thought, and its non-selective affirmation by the overhuman counter to transhumanism’s morally toned selectivity.

All this makes it very unlikely that Nietzsche would, as Sorgner (2009, 34) claims, “have been in favour of genetic engineering” or indeed the transhumanist movement as a whole.

References

Ansell-Pearson, K. 1992. Who is the Ubermensch? Time, truth, and woman in

Nietzsche. Journal of the History of Ideas 53(2): 309-331.

Bostrom, N. 2005. A history of transhumanist thought. Journal of Evolution and Technology 14(1): 1-25.

That the vampire is well and alive today, as it has been, is a notable fact as well as opinion. The cyber vampire is progressively, albeit obviously mapping its course, as things, political, psychological and yes even protomathematical-topically, reaching into our soles and pickets through our increasingly passive lives, over which we are increasingly but subtelly flooding control.

Our control of subsisting on a surface plateau hiding mist mechanisms of social control, are diminishing in a circus like hall of mirrors, possessing qualities of illusion and delusion, where even the primal vision is beginning to fade, due to disfuntional social guidance, via fractured families and selves.

This is no judicial judgement, for even the most misopportunistic can feel and sense this turn of events.

Personal fragmentation via the artistic temperament predicates ideas with visions, far before any program can predict it, its visionaries who fracture first, such as Nietzsche, more an artist then a philosopher, or a magician, more a magician then a sophist.

The Vampire is insoluble and inconsulate, inconsolable and worthless out of the cave, his remedy being only the night's wishes, the night's promise of feeling.

A feeling of pain, that he invites, as the night offers nothing but the pain of hiddenness, of the existing feeling of the necessity of imposing the sane pain which others invite.

Pain is primordial, it surrounds the primal acts of birth and death, of reason and passion.

And so, the inevitable happens: whatever that mode of existence may imply.

The vampire legend and many behaviors and experiences of schizophrenics seem to share many common traits. The traits that are most recognizable are "fears of being enclosed, periods of semistarvation or complete starvation, which can be associated with periodic gorging, reversal of the day-night cycle, and a preoccupation with or dread of mirrors" (Kayton 304). Though the term 'schizophrenia ' or 'demence precoce ' was only introduced in 1852 (Boyle 43), behaviors of people affected by this illness have been documented much earlier.

The concept of a dead person returning in his living physical form and feeding on the living is considered a vampire. The …show more content…

Here is where an important part of the legend draws reference. According to Kayton, the vampire (young suicide) was known to either devour or steal the hearts of his victims. When the heart was stolen, it was placed over a fire to create an intense unfulfilled love in the bosom of the person it was taken from (307). In Dracula we sort of get that sense the three vampire women wanted this from Jonathan. Because when the Count told them that they could not have him, one of them boldly told him: "You yourself never loved" (55). Also, according to schizophrenic suicide history the family members who were often attacked were mainly members who showed their guilt over the oral deprivation onto the fantasized vampire (patient) with a feared oral attack (Kayton 311). That would be the logic of why the victims of the vampire are usually family members or persons they love; as we witness this with Lucy as she tried to kiss Arthur a two different occasions when she became a vampire. This theory also suggests that the parent 's role is very important and their actions with the child of either showing affection or rejection when the child attempts to become close to them (McMahon 212).

Besides the removal of the heart, unmistakably, the most important part of the legend is that the vampire attacks his victims by sucking out their blood. There are claims that the attack of the vampire shows consistency with some of the unconscious fantasies of schizophrenic features.

COMEDYJimmy Fallon Trolls ‘Count Trumpula’ By Revealing Why Halloween Is His Perfect HolidayThe "Tonight Show" host says the president and vampires have a few things in common.By Ed Mazza10/31/2018 05:15 AM ET

Jimmy Fallon thinks he has the perfect Halloween costume for President Donald Trump.

In a spoof message from the Oval Office, the “Tonight Show” host’s version of the president dressed up as a vampire, and for good reason. As “Count Trumpula” revealed, the president is a lot like a vampire himself.

“Dracula’s a terrific person, he’s a great guy. I love his style,” Trumpula said. “He wears a cape, which is basically a giant tie for your back.”

And that’s not the only reason the faux Trump is so fond of Halloween. Turns out the holiday has a few of his favorite things.

SS 433 is a ravenous black hole that sucks the matter off its companion supergiant star like some sort of cosmic vampire—and it’s a messy eater. To date, SS 433 has been the only confirmed instance of a phenomenon known as “supercritical accretion” in which the black hole’s gluttonous stardust scarfing results in a hail of crumbs being thrust out into space. The viewpoint from Earth relative to SS 433 shows the object through a disk of material spiraling toward the black hole, so we do not see the its powerful x-rays in all their glory. But if the view were not obstructed by accreting material, SS 433 would appear as the brightest x-ray emitter in the galaxy.

Because it inhales material so ravenously, SS 433 has attained a singular status as an oddball in the Milky Way. Now, observations of exceedingly bright black hole binaries in nearby galaxies—other stars partnered with voracious black holes—suggest that these astronomical pairs may be up to the same thing. The extragalactic binaries are known as ultraluminous x-ray sources (ULXs) and this new work reveals that they are probably also superaccreting objects.

The ULX enigmaULXs are the brightest sources of x-ray radiation in nearby galaxies, other than the supermassive black holes in galactic centers. Typically, galaxies harbor but one or two ULXs at most. Like the black hole binaries in the Milky Way, ULXs are comprise a black hole—the compact remnant of an exploded star—siphoning material off a partner star. The in-falling material forms an accretion disk around the black hole that heats to millions of degrees and flares x-ray radiation. But ULXs burn hundreds or thousands of times brighter than the black hole binaries in our galaxy, and scientists are still trying to figure out how.

As a rule, the faster black holes eat, the brighter they shine—but there is an upper limit on their luminosity. At a certain point, the pressure of the radiation blazing off the accretion disk is strong enough to counteract the black hole’s gravitational pull, so any excess in-falling material is blasted back out into space. This turning point is called the Eddington limit, which states the more massive a black hole is the stronger its gravity and the brighter it can get before it reaches its Eddington limit.

If ULX black holes were only as big as the black holes in the Milky Way, they should have reached their Eddington limits before getting as bright as they are. So one explanation for ULX luminosity might be that these objects contain “intermediate-mass black holes” at least a thousand times the mass of the sun—not as enormous as the supermassive black holes in the cores of galaxies, but much bigger than the stellar-mass black holes that pepper the Milky Way.

The alternate explanation for ULX brightness is that they are relatively small black holes, upward of 200 solar masses, which ingest material so voraciously that they have reached “supercritical accretion.” Basically, they cheated the Eddington limit and kept getting brighter. “Now, this is not as daft an idea as it might seem,” says Tim Roberts, an astrophysicist at Durham University in England, who was not involved with this study. The existence of the Eddington limit hinges on the assumption that material falls toward the black hole from all directions. But since real-life black holes wrap material around themselves in disks, it is possible for them to keep gobbling matter even after the outward push of radiation should have stemmed their intake. As black holes reach their Eddington limits, their disks become hot and bloated. The matter on the interior of the doughnut-shaped accretion disk is not blasted away by the radiation emanating from the disk’s surface, so it gets sucked into the black hole. Meanwhile radiation pressure blows away outer layers of the disk in a powerful wind. Scientists see this kind of outflow from SS 433.

Since the turn of the millennium astronomers have observed ULXs in hopes of determining which of the two theories describes the true nature of these strange objects, but x-ray observations alone have not settled the debate. So a group of scientists from the Special Astrophysical Observatory in Russia and Kyoto University in Japan investigated the visible light emitted by ULXs, hoping these alternate wavelengths might provide new insight. The team used the Subaru telescope in Hawaii to get optical spectra of the four nearest ULXs. Their work was published in Nature Physics on June 1. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

SS 433 joins an eccentric familyThe scientists found that all of their subjects emitted visible light with similar qualities, meaning that these ULXs probably constitute their own homogenous family of objects. The researchers also saw that key features of the ULX spectra were inconsistent with those expected of a standard accretion disk, ruling out the possibility that ULXs are intermediate-mass black holes gorging on matter in the usual way. Instead, the scientists found that the ULX spectra bore an uncanny similarity to that of SS 433, which, it is thought, harbors a black hole of only about 10 solar masses.

The scientists determined that ULXs are similar to SS 433 by examining features of their visible light called “emission lines.” Such data give insight into the chemical composition of celestial objects and how these particles are moving. The scientists found that the relative strengths and breadth of the hydrogen and helium emission lines in ULX spectra could be explained as originating from different regions in a dense, outward flowing wind—a telltale sign of superaccretion. SS 433 exhibits similar features because of its own disk wind. The absolute brightness of SS 433 is also in the same range as the ULXs observed in this study, which lends further support to the idea of their kinship. The scientists concluded that ULXs are most likely small black holes that have surpassed the Eddington limit, like SS 433.

Lingering uncertainties“This is not the whole story on ULXs,” says Roberts, who is not convinced that they definitively make up their own homogeneous class of objects. “While the majority of objects may be these supercritical black holes, a minority may be equally exotic and maybe more extreme objects.” That means that the alternate theory for ULXs may also be correct. According to Roberts, there are still a handful of ULXs that appear to be good candidates for hosting intermediate-mass black holes.

Astrophysicist David Cseh at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, who was also not involved with this study, agrees with Roberts. Cseh points out that astronomers have spotted at least one ULX that pulsates—that is, it periodically increases and decreases its brightness—which can only be explained by the presence of a neutron star rather than a black hole. “So, for those of us that work in ULXs, there is still plenty of mystery left,” Roberts says. The longstanding debate over the nature of ULXs might not be over yet, but it looks like one weird black hole binary might finally fit in somewhere.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

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Maria Temming

Maria is very excited to be working as a AAAS Mass Media Fellow for Scientific American this summer. She's a double major in physics and creative writing.